Short Essay on the Copyright Law in India – The creator must have the first right to be benefited by any commercial use of his creation. The law recognizes this position.
Copyright is a creator’s exclusive right recognized by law for a certain term of years to publish and sell copies of his original work.
Legally speaking, copyright means the exclusive right to do or authorise others to do certain acts in relation to literary, dramatic or musical works, artistic work, cinematographication, or sound recording.
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The copyright is created and recognised under the Copyright Act, 1957. Copyright is an intellectual property right, it being the work of intellect that it deals with. It is a monopolistic right restraining others from deriving any commercial benefit out of somebody else’s creation. And for being prohibitive in nature it might also be considered a negative right.
Copyright law encourages authors, composers and artists to create original works by rewarding them with the exclusive right for a specified period to reproduce the works for publishing and selling.
However, the copyright does not subsist in ideas; only in the material form in which the ideas are presented. In the field of literary works, the words chosen by the author to express his ideas are peculiar to him but not the idea so expressed.
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The copyright can subsist up to 60 years from the date of death of the original author. It means his legal representative can rightfully derive benefit of his or her creations for as long as sixty years after the death of the author. After that the work comes in public domain and anyone can publish it.